Eight Reasons to Love Having a Substitute Teacher
by Millennium Knight
Summary: There are some substitute teachers who can't keep control of an unruly class and thus allow the class to devolve into chaos. Then there are some who don't just ALLOW the chaos; they ENCOURAGE it and take an active role. Having the flu must have interfered with America's neighbor's decision making capabilities, because we all know which type of substitute America's going to be.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, world. Thank you for reading (or at least demonstrating a possible interest in) my story. I really appreciate it, and hope you enjoy.

I suppose it should go without saying, but I don't own Hetalia. Many tears have been shed over this sad state of events, I assure you.

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**Reason 1:** Substitute teachers aren't used to the way the class does things. Either they do things completely different from how things are usually done, thus providing a break from routine, or else they let things happen the way they're supposed to happen, and then loudly disapprove, thus providing entertainment for the class and a delay of the learning process.

**Chapter 1**

**Weasels in Tanks and Jelly for the Nation**

"You're never gonna guess what I'm doing today."

The eye roll was nearly audible over the phone line. "I'm quite sure I don't _want_ to know what you're doing today, but since you're not going to leave me alone until I do, and since you've already established that I'm not going to guess, just tell me so we can get this over with."

"I'm totally substitute teaching!"

England was silent for several seconds. "You're _what_?" he exclaimed.

"Substitute teaching," America repeated. "Okay, you know how the lady down the street from my house teaches at the middle school a couple blocks away?"

"Why would I know that?"

America shrugged. "I dunno. But she does, and she's sick, so I'm taking her place. It's too last-minute for them to find a sub, plus the flu's going around so most of the usual subs are already busy, and she asked me to do it. Just for the day, until they find someone with more experience."

There were several more seconds of silence before England was able to formulate a response. "You're going to scar the kids for life."

"I'm not gonna screw up the kids by teaching them for one day! It'll be fine."

England sighed, clearly not believing it for a second. "Well, it's not a high school, so at least you _probably_ won't be trying to teach kids who know more than you do."

"Shut up," America snapped. "I'll be fine. I'll even call you at the end of the day so the kids can _tell_ you that everything's fine and that I'm the awesomest substitute teacher ever."

"I can't _wait_ for that," England muttered sarcastically as America hung up on him.

The students in Mrs. Foster's fifth grade class were pleasantly surprised when they entered the classroom to find a substitute in place of their beloved teacher (read: victim), Mrs. Foster. After all, tormenting a teacher, while always an enjoyable activity, has nothing on tormenting a substitute who has never been to teacher school and has thus has never received instruction on how to deal with a class full of behavior problems. Substitutes also are limited in what they can do to discipline students, and have not had all year to learn the dos and don'ts of dealing with the class.

The students took their seats as the bell rang, not that anyone could hear the bell properly over the talking. The vast majority of them were nudging their friends, pointing at the substitute and whispering, and grinning the evil grin most commonly seen on the first of April or while watching someone who's about to set off an elaborate and brilliant practical joke. The students of room 304 were the terror of the school system and they knew it. No teacher had managed to finish a full lesson plan with them before. No substitute teacher had managed to last until lunch time without summoning the administration at least once, let alone gotten through more than half of the lesson plan (and _that_ was only if they cut corners and left out some steps in order to get as far through the lesson plan as possible). Class 304 was thus far undefeated, and it looked to them as if it would be staying that way.

America had other plans.

"Hey, guys," he said, grabbing a blue marker and writing his human name on the whiteboard. _Alfred F. Jones_. He turned to face the class, and grinned. "Your teacher had to stay home today because she's got the flu, so I'm your teacher today. I'm kinda new at this, but that's okay because this is gonna be the best class _ever_!"

Several of the students rolled their eyes. Several others outright laughed. America was not fazed in the slightest.

"My name's Alfred F. Jones. Or, you know, Mr. Jones, since that's how adult names work in school. So, um, let's see. First things first: taking attendance." America went off in search of the attendance chart, and located it after a brief search through the black hole that was the teacher's desk. However, before he could begin calling out names, the intercom crackled to life.

"Good morning students," the principal's voice said. "Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance."

America's face lit up, and he spun wildly, searching the room for the American flag before realizing that it was right above his head. He stepped out from under it and stood facing the flag, right hand on his heart. The students put their right hands on their hearts as well, although with much less enthusiasm than their Nation had.

The principal recited the pledge in a droning "I've said this every day of my career, and it's getting old" voice, and the students said, or rather mumbled, the familiar words along with him.

"I pledge allegiance" (or rather, I pledge jelly-jance) "to the flag…of the UnitedStatesofAmerica. And to the republik…for witchit stands…One nation…under God…indivisible" (or, as several students said, _invisible_) "with liberty and justiceforall."

America was not impressed by the students' less-than-enthusiastic recitation of the pledge, but tactfully remained silent until the principal had finished announcing that chorus practice was cancelled for the day, that someone named Hailey Jackson had won the school's essay contest, and that the cafeteria would be serving chicken tenders at lunchtime. The principal then instructed everyone to have a good day, and with a brief crackle of static, the intercom fell silent once more.

Now America turned to the class. "So, who wants to tell me what everyone just recited?"

The class looked at him in confusion. Clearly this was a trick question. "The Pledge of Allegiance?" one girl guessed.

"Yes. The Pledge of Allegiance. Now, can someone recite it for me?"

The students looked at each other. "But it's not social studies time yet," a redheaded boy protested.

"No it's not," America agreed. "What's your name?"

"George Washington," the boy replied promptly. The class snickered.

"Cool name. So, Mr. Washington, please recite the pledge of allegiance for me," America said without missing a beat.

"Um…I pledge allegiance to the flag—" the boy began, confused by the lack of response. Normally the George Washington thing would have a substitute annoyed, flustered, or possibly even outright angry.

"Stop!" America interrupted suddenly. "You pledge…what? Because it sounded like you said jelly. Like, you're pledging your jelly's allegiance or something, and that's just weird. What does your country want with your jelly?" He paused, and considered this. "I mean, I guess the country might really, really want a sandwich or something..." and now that America thought about it, he kind of _did_ want a sandwich, but now wasn't the time for that… "But I don't see why we'd have to say that every day, and peanut butter is more important to sandwiches anyway. You can't make a proper sandwich with just jelly. Well, you _can_, it's just not as good. But whatever, we're promising jelly to our country! Now what? You pledge your jelly to the flag of the UnitedStatesofAmerica. All one word. And to the republic, only it's pronounced with more of a k than a c, so we all suddenly have an accent or something. To the republik for witchit stands. What's a witchit? Isn't that a breed of dog?"

"Um…the dog is a whippet," the student claiming to be George Washington said.

"Well that's a violent sounding name," America said, startled, as if he had seriously never heard the proper name of the breed before. He _had_ heard it before, during that national dog show they showed every Thanksgiving, but that was always background noise while he made turkey, so he had never paid much attention to it. "Why would they name the dog that?"

Several of the students snickered.

"So then what _is_ a witchit?" America asked.

"It sort of sounds like a type of ferret or a weasel or something," George Washington offered.

"So now we're pledging jelly to the country that's got weasels that stand for it. Like, what? Are they doing tricks? Or are we saying that our national symbol is some kind of weasel?"

"No, the weasels are defending our country. Like, making a stand!" a girl in the back called. Several students laughed. So did America. The Pledge of Jelly was getting better and better.

"Thank you. Now we've got weasels in tanks. That can't possibly go wrong. So, moving on, one nation, under God, invisible, with liberty and justiceforall. What's wrong with this picture?" He pointed to a student at random.

"Um…" the boy said. "We've got weasels driving tanks? And they're not tall enough to reach the pedals?"

"Well, that _is_ a problem," America conceded. "Especially if we want to fight a war. But here's a bigger problem: America isn't invisible! Canada might be, but America sure isn't! This is, like, the most un-invisible country in the world! Why are we pledging jelly to an invisible country with weasels driving tanks? We're not! We're pledging our _allegiance_, our loyalty, to the flag of this country, and to the republic the flag stands for. One nation, under God, indivisible, like as in united, _not_ invisible. With liberty and justice for all! We're pledging our loyalty to our country, okay? That's, like, a big thing. Maybe next time we could try saying it clearly enough that the country doesn't think we're promising it jelly? That sound good to you guys?"

A few students nodded, but most were too busy snickering about weasels.

"Good. And now, attendance. George Washington, I do not see your name on here. What does the attendance chart want me to call you?"

"Tristan Collins," George Washington said, looking rather put-out by America's complete lack of reaction to his fake name. America didn't seem to notice, and instead simply marked him present, then called out the other students' names to mark down their presence, or lack thereof.

"Okay," he announced when he finished. "George-slash-Tristan Washington-Collins, please take this to the office so they don't send out a search party. Everyone else…um…" he trailed off and consulted the lesson plan again. "Everyone else, take out your math books." America paused and looked at the lesson plan again, as if he expected it to have changed in the time it took to say that. "Ugh, you guys have math first? Isn't that a war crime? I'm calling Switzerland—um, I'm calling my friend _in_ Switzerland—and asking him to look it up."

America pulled out his cell phone, and several students snickered. They stopped when he dialed a number and they realized that he was actually serious.

"Hey, Vash, you know about all the Geneva conventiony stuff. It's a war crime to make someone take math class first thing in the morning, isn't it?"

"America, what on Earth are you doing?" Switzerland demanded.

"Substitute teaching."

There were several seconds of silence, during which time Switzerland tried to come up with an adequate response. He finally succeeded. The response in question was a slight click as he hung up the phone.

"He hung up on me!" America exclaimed, sounding scandalized.

"Did you seriously call someone and ask that?" one of the girls asked incredulously.

"Well…yeah. Of course. If it's not a war crime, it totally should be. Someone needs to know about this. But in the meantime, I guess we have to go along with it. So…math books. Let's get this over with."

* * *

So, that was the first chapter. I hope you enjoyed it.

I have to give credit where credit is due: I did not come up with the Pledge of Allegiance thing on my own. My sister and I came up with it on the way home from school last year. Clearly there was a mix-up and we were sent somebody else's plot bunny. But it was so cute, looking at me with its big, sad eyes (do bunnies have big, sad eyes? I've never looked...) that I couldn't possibly just leave it out in the cold, so, with my sister's permission, I adopted it as my own, and now here it is on my desk, nibbling at the corner of my English 102 paper. I hope whoever got sent the darker and edgier plot bunny my sister and I were _supposed_ to recieve is having fun with it.

Anyway, I'm going to try and update this with something resembling reasonable frequency, but don't expect anything more until next week at the earliest, for I shall be vanquishing the ancient evil known as Finals Week, which rises up at the end of every semester to slaughter innocent grade point averages, devour countless hours of sleep, and force students everywhere to consume quantities of coffee that some might consider dangerous (or in my case, dangerous quantities of tea). Wish me luck!


	2. Chapter 2

Well, I'm back and I still don't own Hetalia, so this is still **fan**fiction. I hope you enjoy it!

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**Reason 2**: Substitute teachers don't teach every day the way regular teachers do, so there are certain things that catch them off guard that the class takes for granted. This can cause a certain level of hilarity when it's pointed out.

**Chapter 2**

**Either a Stomachache or Diabetes, or Possibly Both**

"I still can't believe you guys have math class first thing in the morning," America said to nobody in particular as he attempted to extricate the teacher's edition of the math textbook from the black hole of a teacher's desk without causing an office supply avalanche. "I mean, one, who can focus on math this early? And two, even if people _can_ focus on math this early, who the heck _wants_ to? Aren't you supposed to start off with the easy stuff to get the knowledge absorption started, and then do the harder stuff once your brain's already gotten into learning mode?" He gave the textbook a yank, freeing it from the pile of assorted teacher materials and, in the process, sending paperclips sliding down the side of the pile and onto the floor. "Oops. I'll get that in a minute."

Muffled laughter came from various spots in the classroom as several of the students tried not to give away the fact that the paperclip avalanche had been engineered by one of their own, who'd moved the cup of paperclips from the relatively safe spot behind the computer onto the top of a pile of books, paper, and notebooks when America hadn't been looking.

America, meanwhile, located the math-related instructions on the lesson plan. "Okay, so it says that you're supposed to do the problems on page 112 and 113. The multiplying and dividing fractions mixed review. Oh, and you're supposed to do this without talking. Because it's apparently impossible to talk and do math at the same time. So…you guys do that, and I'll be over by the desk picking up paper clips."

There were approximately thirty seconds of silence before the class decided to prove that it _was_ in fact possible to talk and do math at the same time. This lasted for approximately thirty more seconds before they gave up on the math part and just talked.

"Guys," America interrupted them after several minutes of nothing being accomplished, "your teacher said you have to do the math problems for homework if you don't finish them in class. I don't see anyone doing actual math, which I guess kinda proves your teacher right about it being impossible to do math and talk. You know, I looked at the lesson plan, and there's no actual homework assigned. You guys could totally have a homework-free night if you get this done in class."

"Or we could have a work-free class," George Washington pointed out.

"You _could_," America agreed. "But I don't know why you _would_. There's nothing fun to do here except sit and talk, but when you get home, you could do whatever you want. I don't know why you'd rather do math at home, surrounded by all kinds of fun stuff you could be doing, instead of here where there's not much else to do anyway."

"Could we talk _while_ we do math?" one of the girls asked.

"Is _anyone_ doing math right now?" America responded, looking around the room. "I see exactly one pencil moving, and its owner isn't doing any talking. So clearly there's some truth to the speech and math not coexisting thing. I mean, if you guys want to try, I guess that's okay as long as you actually work while you talk. But don't blame me if you end up with homework because of it. And keep the volume down so we don't have the teachers next door getting annoyed at us, okay?"

A couple minutes of relative quiet descended on the room. America finished picking up the last of the paper clips, then plopped into the teacher's chair, hijacked a piece of paper from the printer, and started drawing a Superman comic. He got about as far as drawing the building that Superman was standing on before he was interrupted by one of the boys waving his hand wildly and calling "Mr. Jones, can you do an example problem on the board or something?"

"Um…I guess. What are you having trouble with?" America said, looking up from his Superman comic.

"The word problems."

America looked rather confused at this. "What's the difference between word problems and regular problems?"

"Word problems are evil."

"Ah. Of course. Okay, let's do one on the board to get our brains into math mode. Someone give me a word problem."

The boy who'd raised his hand, Alexander, read out the first word problem on the page. "On Friday night, John ate pizza for dinner. He had 1/2 of the pizza left over. On Saturday, he ate 1/3 of the remaining pizza. What did he have when he finished eating?"

America looked at him strangely. "Type two diabetes?" he guessed. "I mean, I'm assuming hypothetical John is the same age as the students the book is marketed to. So he's, what, ten or eleven years old and eats half a pizza in one sitting. He clearly doesn't have the healthiest eating habits, not that I've got any right to preach about healthy eating."

Several students snickered.

"I don't think you can get to that mathematically, though, so I guess we should properly work it out."

"Can you get to a stomachache mathematically?" one of the girls asked.

America considered this. "Um…maybe if you knew how much stomach content equals a stomachache. But I don't know that, and I doubt anyone else does either, so let's just figure out how much pizza he had left instead. We know he had half a pizza before he started eating on Saturday, and he had two thirds of that left after he finished. So what we need to find out is what two thirds of a half is." He wrote the problem on the board. "So we multiply the top row of the problem first. One times two is two, so that's the numerator of the answer. And the bottom row is two times three, which is six. So our answer is two sixths, or one third." He circled the answer on the board, looked at it for a second, then crossed it out and wrote _a stomachache, diabetes, or both. _"We all know this is the real answer, though. Just don't write that one on the paper. Write the socially acceptable answer, just know that this—" here he tapped the words he'd written on the board "is the actually _right _one. But do you guys understand how to get to the socially acceptable answer?"

"Not at all. You should do more problems on the board to show us," Alexander said. America gave him a Look.

"I'll do a division problem on the board so that you guys have an example of each, okay? Then you just plug in the different numbers to the example problems. Someone give me a division problem."

"If you want to divide 7/8 pizza between 3 people, how much pizza would each person get?" George Washington called out. America looked confused.

"These are really weird word problems. Why are they all about pizza?" America demanded. "Doesn't anyone eat anything else in the world of math problems? And why are you only dividing seven eighths of a pizza anyway? Why wouldn't you divide the _whole_ pizza? What's the other eighth of the pizza for? Anyone got a suggestion?"

"Maybe they gave it to the dog," George Washington said.

"What, so we're giving the dog diabetes too? Why don't we have any proper dog food? Word problems are _insane_! But okay, let's give the dog a piece of pizza and divide the rest up between three people, because we're word problem land, so we don't think too clearly." America wrote 7/8 3/1 on the board. "Now, this is division, so we have to flip the second number before we multiply anything, which makes the new problem 7/8 times one third. Then we multiply it out..." America did so, and looked curiously at the answer he got. "That can't be right. Let me try that again," he said, multiplying the numbers a second time, and getting the same answer. He shrugged and turned to the class. "So, we've divided the fractions, and now our new question is _who the heck divides a pizza into twenty-fourths_, because apparently each person gets seven of them, and seven twenty-fourths doesn't come out to anything simpler than seven twenty-fourths. You know, most people would just divide up the existing number of pieces and if they came out uneven, someone would just say that they're not too hungry, so they don't mind having one piece less. Or else they'd cut the extra piece into thirds or something, but they sure wouldn't divide the pizza into twenty-fourths to make sure that everyone gets the _exact_ same amount of pizza. Nobody cares about dividing things up _that_ equally. I'd hate to see what they do when they find out that the number of ounces of coke in the refrigerator isn't divisible by three. Get out a little eye dropper thing and measure the number of drops of coke to make sure that everyone gets the exact same amount?"

"Well they've got to give the dog some coke too, so maybe that'll make it divisible by three," one of the girls said.

"Oh, right. The dog eats people food. I forgot. Seriously, what is up with word problems? The people in them do the weirdest things. But, okay, now we've got our two examples on the board, so you guys can do the rest by yourselves. Let me know if anyone else does something weird."

And with that, America returned to drawing Superman until the next class began, and the students began to eagerly skim the word problems to find more illogical actions to mock.

* * *

Okay, this was updated with absolutely _nothing_ even remotely resembling the "reasonable frequency" I talked about in the last chapter, and I apologize for that. But fortunately I have a fancy schedule hanging over my desk now, so I'm not going to do this again, I promise. Thanks so much for your patience! Also, thank you to the wonderful people who reviewed the last chapter!

So, am I the only one who just doesn't understand why people in word problems do the things they do? Either they divide things up in the strangest ways, or they eat half a pizza at once, or (my personal favorite) they randomly decide to put a handful of gumdrops in a bag and pick out exactly _one_ to eat, when any normal person would either eat the whole handful or just take one to begin with. Probability word problems are weirder than fraction ones sometimes. Why would anyone want to calculate the probability of picking a red gumdrop when they could just _eat_ the gumdrops? Now that I think about it, I really don't know why I had the class work on fractions when I could have had them do probability. I guess I picked the second funniest topic, at least. Oh, and just so you know, I didn't make up the word problems in the chapter. These strange word problems really do exist; I found them online.

According to my fancy schedule (which is actually not fancy at all), I should have the next chapter done by Tuesday. I'd have it done sooner, but I'm multi-tasking: my sister and I have an absolutely _massive_ WWII fanfiction that we're going to post in February, and we're trying to get a chunk of it done before then so that we can work out any problems that arise _before_ we go to publish anything. (Not-so-fun fact: it's annoyingly difficult to find any decent resources on the invasion of Poland.)

Anyway, thanks so much for reading! See you next chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

Like pretty much every other fanfic writer out there, I do not own the source material. Hetalia is not mine. I find this somewhat depressing, but it's probably a good thing in the long run, since if Hetalia _was_ mine, it wouldn't be as good.

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**Reason 3**: Substitute teachers, as long as they're not the kind who sit behind the desk and read the newspaper while the class pretends to work, can usually never resist telling stories. These stories can range from boring to interesting, but at least you have someone to blame when the regular teacher gets back and wants to know why nobody got any work done.

Chapter 3:

How Historical Reenactment Almost Caused a Nuclear War

"The nightmare ends! Math is over!"

The sudden announcement, delivered at nearly twice the necessary volume, brought an abrupt end to a long period of (relative) quiet, yanking the students out of the weird world of word problems (try saying that three times fast) and pulling them back into the slightly less weird world of fifth grade math class.

"And now," America continued, somewhat theatrically, "We can finally begin to recover from this crime against humanity by moving on to the less evil subject of…" he trailed off and consulted the lesson plan. "Social studies!"

The class was significantly less enthusiastic than America had expected them to be. There was a round of collective eye-rolling, a few groans, and one instance of a student gagging and pretending to vomit.

"What's wrong with social studies?" America asked.

"It's _boring_," Alexander complained. "All we do is read lesson one, define vocabulary, read lesson two, define vocabulary, read lesson three, define vocabulary, fill out a study guide, take a test, then move on to the next chapter and do the same thing."

"Oh. Yeah, I can see how that could get kinda boring."

"And whenever we have a sub, we get a big packet of worksheets to do," a girl added.

America consulted the lesson plan once more. It did indeed instruct him to have the students fill out a packet of worksheets. He hunted around the desk until he found the packets. "Aaaand guess what your teacher assigned _this_ time," he said, holding them up. He handed them to the nearest student. "Take one and pass the rest down." He thought for a second. "Any chance there's more word problems we can make fun of?"

Some of the students looked through the packets hopefully. "Nope. There's a crossword puzzle, some passages we're supposed to read and answer comprehension questions on, a list of vocabulary words to unscramble the letters of, and a word search."

"A what?" America demanded, stealing the packet and flipping through it. Sure enough, the final page was a word search. "You have to do a word search? What does that teach you? You don't have to _know_ anything to do a word search; they list the words to find…wait, is one of the words seriously _cannon_? What are you guys studying?"

"The Revolution," George Washington said.

"So _that's_ what inspired you to go by the name of one of our Founding Fathers. Good idea. Washington was pretty cool. That still doesn't answer the question of why they put the word cannon in the word search."

"Well they used cannons in the war," Alexander pointed out.

"They also ate food during the war, but you don't see that on the list," America retorted, handing the packet back to the girl he'd stolen it from. "They could have at least put the names of battles or something."

"There's the Boston Tea Party," the girl said, skimming the word list.

"Well, that's at least valid, although it's not actually a battle. That's throwing tea into a harbor. It was a great protest, and I _wish_ I'd seen England's reaction when he first found out about it, oh and it was _really_ fun to do, but it…" America trailed off again. _Oops_. "I mean…" he frantically searched his mind for a convincing cover story. "I do…reenactments," he finally blurted out. "Historical reenactments. Dressing up in old-fashioned clothes and…and reenacting history!"

"Why'd you call England a _he_?" the girl who'd pointed out the Boston Tea Party (America was pretty sure her name was Chloe) asked. "Aren't countries usually _she_?"

"Um…that depends on who you ask. Plenty of people call countries _he_."

"But isn't it, like Mother England or something? That's what _School House Rock_ says."

Great. Now that "No More Kings" song was stuck in his head. Not that America had a problem with the song (it was a great way to bug England)…but still, he didn't want it playing on repeat in his head for the rest of the day. "I'm not _School House Rock_. You can tell by how I'm not singing everything."

And the class had to admit, that was a pretty good point. Still… "So if _School House Rock_ says Mother England, how come you say that England's a boy?"

"Because he is," America said immediately, then began frantically searching for a verbal backspace key. "I mean, in the historical reenactment club...at my college. We, um, we sometimes put on shows where we act out history with each of us representing a different country." That sounded convincing, right? "And we act out the wars and stuff and…aren't you guys supposed to be doing your packets? You should do that now. Work on your packets."

"Do we _have _to?"

"It's revenge for you getting the 'No More Kings' song stuck in my head."

Chloe shrugged, as if to say _fair enough_, and started filling out the crossword puzzle. "So if England's a guy, what about America?"

"I'm America."

"What about…France?"

America sighed. "Most of the countries are guys," he said, inadvertently causing the Grade School Boys-versus-Girls Cold War to threaten to heat up.

Here's a fun little activity for you to do next time you're bored: go into a grade school class and insinuate that one gender is not _exactly_ equal to the other in some way, no matter how insignificant, whether it's a question of superiority in a particular area or just a question of numbers, and watch as suddenly half the class is on their feet cheering and organizing a victory parade, while the other half is busy declaring an all-out, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners World War Three. And sure enough, a decent chunk of the class certainly looked about ready to take up arms and fire off the rubber-band-shot heard round the world.

"Why?" Chloe demanded, and the tension levels rose.

America looked rather like a deer in headlights as he struggled to find an answer in time to prevent a classroom nuke-fest. "I dunno. There's just more guys than girls in the club."

"But _why_ aren't there more girls?"

"There just weren't as many girls interested? It's not like we have a No Girls Allowed rule."

Chloe considered this for a minute. "What countries are girls?" she finally asked. An unspoken _this is your last chance to prevent nuclear war. Don't screw it up_.

Thanks to his experience in a certain other cold war, America picked up the unspoken message loud and clear, and set about diffusing the situation. "Let's see…there's Belarus and Ukraine," he began. Realizing that most of the class probably hadn't heard of either country, America located a world map and pointed to them. "They're really close to Russia, so in the club, we say that they're Russia's sisters. And then there's Liechtenstein, which is a little country right _here_, who's like Switzerland's little sister." Pointing out the smallest female country, America realized right after saying it, was probably not the best way to diffuse the situation. He quickly continued with his list. "And then there's Hungary right _here_. She was married to Austria for a while, and they were called Austria-Hungary back then, but now they're just friends."

"Why aren't any of the _cool_ countries girls?" another girl complained.

Oh great. The nukes were ready to be fired off any moment now. America's time was running out. "Hungary's pretty cool," he said. "She saved Austria's butt in the War of Austrian Succession by beating up Prussia."

The girls' side of the war appeared to have been somewhat appeased by this, but now it was the boys' side that was getting defensive. "Is Russia a boy?" George Washington asked.

"_Prussia_," America corrected. "Not Russia. Well, they're _both_ guys, but more importantly, they're different countries. Prussia isn't on the map anymore, but he's definitely different from Russia. And he kinda hates Russia, so he'd pitch a fit if you mixed them up. Russia's the really big country that we nearly had World War Three with. Prussia's kinda like Germany's big brother. He got dissolved after World War Two, so you won't find him on the map, but historically, he was right around _here_."

"Why'd Prussia get dissolved?" George Washington asked.

Good. He was getting a little distracted. Diplomacy seemed to be working, at least for the moment. "Well, it _was_ World War Two. The Nazis happened, and a bunch of countries took issue with them. And there was kinda a genocide, which never really goes over well. That plus taking over a whole lot of places kinda ticked some people off, especially the people in the places that got taken over, so…you know, after the war, everyone was a little bit upset with Team Germany."

Behold the powers of oversimplification and understatement. The class, now distracted from their potential nuclear war, giggled at America's description of the bloodiest conflict in human history. The Cold War stopped heating up. Even a class that had probably never studied World War Two in very great detail knew that America's explanation was very, _very_ understated.

"So if World War Two was everyone being upset with Germany, what happened when America and Russia almost had World War Three?" Chloe asked. "Were there Nazis there too?"

"Heck no, the Nazis were only in World War Two. In the Cold War, which is when we nearly had World War Three, the bad guys were the communists."

And off America went on yet another oversimplified (not to mention heavily biased) explanation of history, much to the students' delight. The Boys versus Girls Cold War was forgotten, as were the packets of busywork.

* * *

Okay, once again, I am SO SORRY for how long it took me to update. That WW2 fanfic I mentioned in the last chapter kinda took over my free time. It's finally posted, though. I put the link in my profile in case anyone might be interested.

I'm working on chapter four now, so I'll probably have it posted by the end of the day.

So, on the subject of busywork packets...is it just me, or do they _always_ seem to include a word search? And, inevitably, there's always some word on the list that shouldn't even be on the word search. The word _cannon_ was actually on an American Revolution word search I found online.

The reason the students didn't know about Prussia was because I distinctly remember that my first time being taught about Prussia in any history class was my first semester of college. (Admittedly, my world history class in high school skipped quite a bit of important stuff.) It seemed reasonable that the class hadn't heard of Prussia at this point, and assumed that America was talking about Russia, who they had heard of.

Also, on the subject of social studies...you know how the Hetalia dub is always making fun of how Americans don't know much about the world? Well, I can kinda see why: I looked through the Louisiana social studies curriculum (becuase I went to school in Louisiana) and it's...um...not very good. The part that bugs me the most is that you don't take world history until your _senior year_ of high school. There's _three _American history years, one Louisiana history year, and one year in which you study a few ancient civilizations (mostly Egypt, Greece, and Rome), but you don't get an actual world history class until your last year of school. I don't know about the other states' curriculum, but if they're anything like this, I can see why Hetalia likes to make fun of us. Maybe it's just me, but one year just doesn't seem like enough to cover the history of the world...

Anyway, I should have the next chapter posted soon. And this time, I'm _actually _going to stick to my schedule and get it posted. No, seriously. Ignore the fact that I've already made that promise twice; this time I'm really going to do it!


	4. Chapter 4

Well, Hetalia wasn't mine this morning. I think we can safely say that it probably still isn't mine.

* * *

**Reason 4**: If something happens that isn't covered in the instructions left by the regular teacher, the substitute has to improvise. The effects of this improvisation can be anything from a minor delay as the substitute consults the teachers in the surrounding area to something completely unexpected, completely hilarious, completely wonderful, or all of the above.

Chapter 4

It's World War One-Half and It's All About Italy's Pasta

By the time America finished his impromptu explanation of World War I, the sky had become ominously cloudy. Halfway through his explanation of the French Revolution, the first drops of rain started to fall. By the end of social studies class, it was pouring, and by the time America escorted the class to the cafeteria for lunch, there had been several instances of thunder and lightning. All of this together formed a giant flashing neon arrow pointing directly to Rainy Day Recess.

As America had learned from the other teachers in the hall during the lunch period, Rainy Day Recess (which was always pronounced in such a way that one could clearly hear the capital letters) was second on the list of the top five most dreaded events according to middle school teachers. (One step below Unexpected Classroom Visitors and one step above the apocalypse, which was, in turn, one step above Cultural Arts Days and two steps above Fire Drills in the Middle of a Test). Rainy Day Recess consisted of the students staying in their classrooms for recess, and either watching a movie or being turned loose to entertain themselves with the contents of the classroom library and any board games they could find in the cabinets.

The teachers strongly recommended that America not choose the second option.

America, meanwhile, decided on the second option after a brief search revealed that the only movies in the classroom were boring educational ones. Not even the History Channel or National Geographic kind of educational movies, either. The made-for-the-classroom kind of movies about things like sound waves or the water cycle or famous poets. The movies that teachers have to give worksheets on in order to keep the students awake for the duration. America didn't have worksheets, but he did have standards, and they prevented him from subjecting innocent children to half an hour of mind-numbingly boring videos.

So board games it was, then.

America dug around the shelves and cabinets until he found a small assortment of board games. Candy Land, checkers/chess, The Game of Life, and a few others. Certainly all decent ways to pass the time, but ultimately _not_ the recipe for a fun-filled recess. He pulled them out anyway and stacked them on the overhead projector.

The class returned from lunch, everyone talking at several times the necessary volume in order to be heard over all the other people talking at several times the necessary volume. Nobody looked particularly inspired by the games America had set out, but everyone drifted toward them anyway and started claiming the games they wanted, in the most disinterested way possible because, let's face it, chess, checkers, and Candy Land are not an acceptable substitute for half an hour on the school playground.

Speaking of chess, a couple of students had claimed the chess board, had set up the pieces completely wrong, and appeared to be playing checkers with the chess pieces. America watched with interest for a minute before interrupting.

"You know, there's more checkers if you want to use those," he pointed out.

"But these are more fun," the girl, Anna, said. "These have horses and castles."

"The horses are knights," America told her. "The castles are called rooks."

The other chess(?) player, Chris, picked up a pawn. "What's this one?"

"That guy's a pawn. Then there's _this_ one, which is a bishop. And this one right here is a queen. And all of them are supposed to protect this last one, which is the king."

"You can play chess?!" Chris asked, sounding utterly amazed, as if he'd never heard of such a thing before.

Ah, chess. There's just something about the game, or maybe just the pieces, that makes it seem like one of the great mysteries of the universe, at least until you learn that the rules aren't actually as complicated or mysterious as you thought.

"Yeah, of course I can play. England…I mean, the guy in the historical reenactment club who represents England—his name's Arthur—he insisted on teaching me to play. See, the way it works is you try to capture the other player's king. And each piece moves a different way. It's kinda like checkers, only they can't all move the same, and you're after one specific piece instead of trying to capture all of them. Of course, the chess pieces can still capture other pieces, but the game doesn't end until the king is taken."

Chris and Anna thought this over for a second, weighing their options. Continue the checkers game or unravel one of the mysteries of the universe?

There's a reason they only thought it over for a second.

"Can you teach us to play?" Anna asked eagerly.

"Yeah. The point of chess is that it's supposed to be…like a medieval war between these two opposing countries."

"What countries?"

America thought about it. "Um…England and France? They fought a lot. No, it's Prussia and Austria; it seems more like them. Prussia's the white side, because the white side always moves first and Prussia's always ready to fight Austria. It's his hobby or something."

"Are we talking about Prussia?!" demanded George Washington, coming up eagerly. "I wanna hear!"

"Actually, we're talking about chess, but, you know, same thing. The white side's Prussia, and the black side's Austria."

"What are they fighting over?" Anna asked.

America thought about it. "Probably Prussia got an idea into his head and decided to start a fight, like he always does. So he stole Austria's piano." Wait, that didn't quite work. "Or maybe just all his sheet music. The piano might be too heavy. Although he might have messed up the piano. Anyway, Prussia started a fight. White moves first, since he's the one who started things, and presumably he prepared for war beforehand so he wouldn't get caught off guard. So the pieces line up like _this_, and…hmm, he's just gonna get right out there into the middle of the action. And Prussia's probably a knight. They move in an L shape and they're more unpredictable. Since Prussia's pretty good at strategy, he kinda catches you by surprise, so let's say he's the white knight. He moves, like this, and now it's Austria's turn."

"Wait, who are the other pieces?" George Washington asked.

"Hmm…um, let's see…if Prussia's the knight, the pawns are just the army, and hmm…the king would probably be Frederick the Great, since he's kinda Prussia's favorite king."

"Who's the queen? Does Prussia have a crush on anyone?" Anna asked eagerly.

"Um…maybe Hungary, but she's on Austria's side. It can't be a romantic thing, then, so what would be Prussia's favorite and most powerful…ooh, I've got it! It's Gilbird!"

"It's _what?_"

"Gilbird. See, the guy who represents Prussia, his name is Gilbert. And he's got an ego the size of a continent or two, so he named his pet bird after himself. The bird's name is Gilbird. And he takes it _everywhere _with him. So, Gilbird's Prussia's queen, which kinda makes sense in a really weird way. The queen can move in any direction, as far as it wants until it runs into something. The bird can fly around the battlefield and, I don't know, peck people."

This got some raised eyebrows, but nobody commented. America continued uninterrupted. "So the bird's the queen, and…who's the rook? Let's say Germany and ignore the fact that Germany and Frederick the Great don't exist at the same time. Germany can, I don't know, punch through stuff. He's strong, but he's really big on doing things by the book, which limits how much unorthodox diagonal stuff he can do. And the Bishop is… I'm gonna say Italy. It moves diagonally and Italy, or at least the guy who represents Italy, is really weird. He's all about doing things in weird, unconventional diagonal ways, and he'd want to be on whatever side Germany's on. Plus the Vatican's in Italy, so it makes some sense that he'd be the bishop, even if Italy should be working for Austria at this point…let's just cheat and say he defected to Team Prussia because Germany's on that side. And Austria stole his pasta."

"What about Austria's side? You said he and Hungary were married," Chris said. "Is she his queen?"

"Heck yeah, and she's gonna beat up the whole Prussian army the second Prussia looks at Austria funny. And Austria's just gonna stand there and stare and daydream about, like, kissing her and stuff."

The onlookers snickered at this.

"Okay, so Hungary's his queen. Austria's probably the king, since he's all snobby and aristocratty and he prefers to play his piano instead of fighting. Although if his piano's damaged, he might be beating up Team Prussia with Hungary. But…I don't know, um…Italy pushed him down the stairs for stealing his pasta, so his ankle's messed up, which is why he can't go more than a square in any direction. And then the black rook is…South Italy. A different person does South Italy, because they were raised by different governments, and the guy who represents South Italy hates Germany, so he's just gonna run up and try to hit him a whole lot. Who cares that South Italy should be on Team Spain instead of Team Austria. Let's say…he's undercover, disguised as North Italy so that nobody will suspect him as he steals back North Italy's pasta. And punches Germany, which'll kinda blow his cover, so he's gotta make sure everyone looks away before he does it. He can yell something about France showing up to flirt with people; that would distract anyone."

"Who's Austria's bishop, then? Can it be France, showing up to flirt with people?" George Washington asked eagerly.

"No, that's not weird enough. And if he's gonna flirt, he'd flirt with both sides, so let's say that France is off to the side of the chessboard, distracting everyone. Any mistakes or stupid moves either side makes is because he distracted them and screwed up their train of thought by flirting. And he's doing this to, um, to let Canada infiltrate Austria's team and take out Germany because if he does that, North Italy gets really upset and South Italy gets really excited, so you can tell which is which. And while Austria's dealing with the Italies, France can sneak into Austria's house and steal Italy's pasta. Because that's what he's after. France orchestrated this whole thing to steal Italy's pasta because since both North and South Italy love pasta, France can use the pasta to bribe them into rebelling against Austria and Spain and coming to his side. This is all France's plan to take over Italy. With pasta. Which he can't make by himself because his oven is broken. It's World War One-Half, 'cause it's before the proper World Wars, and it's all about stealing Italy's pasta. Let's play chess, everyone. Not that it matters who wins, since no matter what happens, Austria is distracted and France gets the pasta. But let's just see who kicks whose butt."

And that's exactly what they proceeded to do. And it was _glorious_.

(Especially when Gilbird beat up Austria and won the game.)

* * *

I'm not really sure I like this chapter, but my wonderful beta-reader/sister said it was okay, so maybe I'm delusional? No, I still hate it, but hey, on the bright side, _I managed to keep my promise about updating by the end of the day!_ (Admittedly, it's eleven at night, but technically it's still the twenty-third!)

I know when I was in school, Rainy Day Recess was never very fun because the teachers either showed a boring, educational movie or pulled out some really ancient board games that nobody was interested in. I usually just read a book, although I played chess with my fifth grade teacher once. Speaking of chess, I _suck_ at it. It's one of those games I really want to be good at, but I just can't seem to play.

My sister and I just had a conversation over Skype about how exactly Gilbird beat up Austria. Pecking him wouldn't do much actual damage, unless he went for the eyes or something, but Austria wears glasses, and those would get in Gilbird's way. Maybe he just stole Austria's glasses and watched Austria fall off a conveniently-placed cliff or something? I don't know.


End file.
